Most existing computing devices must be booted and made substantially operational in order to provide helpful information and functionality. For example, if a user is carrying around his or her laptop computer from meeting to meeting, it might be helpful to reference a calendar program on the computer to determine the proper time and location for the next meeting. However, to access the calendar program, the computer user must keep the computer running or repeatedly boot and shutdown (or wake up and suspend) the computer during this time. Unfortunately, the former presents concerns about battery usage, heat, and damage to the computer from jostling and bumping during operation, and the latter presents an inconvenience so significant that it may discourage the user from accessing the computer at all for this purpose.
To address this problem, computer designers have provided auxiliary display devices that supplement the primary display devices of certain systems. For example, in some existing laptop computers with a clam-shell-type design (in which the primary display device is positioned on the “interior” side of a panel that closes against the computer's keyboard), an auxiliary display device is positioned in the opposite (“exterior”) side of the panel, so as to allow auxiliary access to certain computer information and functionality when the laptop computer's lid is closed. In another example, the auxiliary display device is attached externally to the computing device, such as by being fastened to the lid of a laptop computer by a mounting clip. In another approach, a mobile phone, a Bluetooth display device, or other display device is communicatively coupled to the computing device to provide auxiliary display capabilities. However, these design approaches add nontrivial costs and size/space requirements to computing device designs that are continuously pressured to provide a lower cost and a thinner/lighter system.